“Actresses are so dramatic!” Valerie flapped her bird-like arms in Sam’s direction. “Tell her what she’s going to help us with, darling.”
“I’m gonna get myself a drink.” I started for the kitchen.
“I don’t think so!”
Sam blocked the way at Valerie’s bidding. Damn it! Both the liquor and the long, pointy knives were in the kitchen! I required one, then the other, then the first again.
I shook Sam’s hand off me and crossed my arms. He couldn’t meet my eye and took a step backward. “You’re going to help us steal something from the British Museum.”
My heart stopped. When I could find words again, I wiped my sweaty hands on my dress and said, “And why will I do that?”
Valerie laughed and batted her false eyelashes. “Because I’ll kill you if you don’t.”
Finally! A little forthrightness is all I require in a villain. My heart started again, but irregularly in protest, like a fish flopping between my boobs. The knot of fear that had left me after Bruges tightened anew. “You think you can just kill a celebrity”—I shuddered when I said it, okay?—“and no one will notice? I have a movie to film.”
“Well, I’m not gonna do it
now
.” Her smile never wavered. I believe the phrase ‘creepy as fuck’ was inspired by her.
“Why are you doing this?” My voice got squeaky, shrill. “And you,” I spat ‘you’ towards Sam as if the word was a venomous spider launching at his head, “you’re gonna help her hurt me?”
“No!” He took a step towards me, jerked his head over his shoulder to see Valerie’s disapproval and retreated again. “I’m here to help you perform the theft. I’m the expert. You’re the way in.”
“There are a million things to steal in a million places. Why this museum, with me, right now?”
Valerie shrugged. “I thought you wanted the abridged version?”
“Ugh! I’m getting a drink, whether you want me to or not. Kill me or get the hell out of my way.” I shoved past Sam, giving him a solid punch on the shoulder as I whooshed by. Aw, I’d missed hitting him. Memories… I retraced my steps and smacked him again for old time’s sake. And because he’d brought a woman who wanted to kill me to my house. Mostly the latter.
Sam followed me into the kitchen, where I splashed some water on my chest. Another hot flash racked my body. This horrible man was actually sending me into early menopause. At least I wouldn’t need the pill anymore. Because I’d be sexless, and also dead.
As soon as we were out of sight, I rounded on him. I slapped him across the face, the sting in my hand infusing me with utter delight.
He ducked down and put his forearms up between us. I pinched him, and, when he recoiled, I kicked him in the shin.
“Stop that!” he gasped.
“Not until I’ve got to your rotten, lying balls!” I readied my knee. He scurried across the floor like a cockroach. I laughed and dived towards the butcher block, full of delightful knives. I didn’t really want to cut Sam, but that damn, tall Valerie woman…she could stand to lose a few inches. Up top or below—didn’t matter.
“Do you think she won’t do what she’s threatened?” he said while pressed against the fridge.
“Why are you helping her? How else would she find me?”
He rolled his eyes, which I thought presumptuous, considering the circumstances. “She had you followed, which is not difficult. You’re the easiest mark in the world—I’ve never met anyone who puns so loudly…and so many places…”
“Fuck you.” My façade finally broke, and I started to cry. I couldn’t find an ounce of energy to care anymore. “This is never gonna work. Why don’t the two of you just be done with it? Kill me now. Put me out of my misery.”
“No!” He rushed forward and gripped me by the shoulders. “Let me help you, and we’ll be fine.”
His voice hitched between the words “be” and “fine.” That didn’t instil confidence. Was my lying liar losing the ability to lie lie-ingly?
I searched his eyes. “
We
? Is she blackmailing you, too?”
“No, of course not. I’m perfectly happy to see you killed.”
I shoved him away. “You’re perfectly happy to see her banged.”
“What?”
“You’re banging that evil whore!”
“Are you two talking about little old me?” Valerie’s voice sailed in from the other room, light as a feather, stiff as a knife.
A dark cloud rumbled across his face. The dimple hid in shame, nowhere to be found. “You’re screwing your co-star. It’s been less than a week!”
“And you dumped me. Did you think no one else would want me? I’m short, sexy splendour, asshole, and everybody but you knows it!” I grabbed the entire bottle of Scotch and stomped back into the living room. If ever there was a time to be drunk, this hour, this day, this week was it.
Sam the bastard hadn’t even denied taking out the Eurotrash!
“I taught Sam everything he knows,” Valerie vamped after I sat back down again.
“I don’t need to hear about your sexual exploits.” I took a swig of Scotch.
Sam sat beside the ruinous harpy. “She taught me how to
steal things
. A long time ago.”
Valerie lovingly caressed his thigh with long, pointy red nails. I drank more Scotch. “I also taught him how to—”
“Okay, here’s the plan,” Sam said, loudly, pulling his leg away. “I’m your brand new personal assistant. I will accompany you to the set and, with a little preparation and when the time is right, we’ll lift the target.”
“And what’s the target?” I raised the bottle to my lips, but he darted forward and yanked it from my hands.
I shot him a look of pure, stinking, bedbug-filled anger. He smiled and whipped a phone from his pocket. After a moment of poking at the screen, he turned to face to me. “We’re stealing the Mold Cape.”
Even I had heard of that. I grabbed the phone. “The ancient gold…um, mantle thing?”
He nodded.
My mouth suddenly the Sahara, I gaped at the small picture on the phone. It appeared to be a capelet for the shoulders and bust, but made entirely of gold. The website said that it had been discovered in 1833 in a place called Mold in Wales, hence the name. It dated from somewhere about 1600BC—its value must be incalculable.
They were out of their ever-loving minds.
“How the hell are you gonna sell this?” I asked both of them. “It’s one of a kind, and hella famous.”
“I already have a buyer.” Valerie smiled at me as if I were a simpleton. She was maybe…forty? With the body of a twenty-five-year-old. Not
me
at twenty-five, but someone who’d actually gone to the gym. In a few years, she’d be aggressively reedy and probably so thin it aged her, but for now, gorgeous. She leant forward on the couch and flipped her blown-out hair over one languid shoulder. “You’ll be able to get anywhere in that museum—”
“It doesn’t work that way!” I laughed a laugh of pure panic at the idiocy on display. “You think there’ll be no security because we’re filming? Do you know how many hoops the producers had to jump through to get permissions? How much money the production donated?”
“You are the star. Act like it. I’m not interested in excuses. You get me that cape, or I’ll get you.” Tee hee hee!
“Why?” I held my breath for a moment to tamp down on the fear threatening to erupt from every pore. “Why me? Why this?”
Valerie laughed and flipped her hair again, this time in Sam’s direction. He ducked backward to avoid a fistful of follicles in the mouth. His eyes narrowed in rage for just a second before his face fell into studied lines of neutrality. She said, “Sam wanted to show me his loyalty, and he’s happy to use you to do so.”
Sam kept his gaze glued to the carpet, but his jaw was working like a hooker on Saturday night. This couldn’t be his idea. Likely Valerie had got wind of the same spurious rumours about Sam that Jane had heard. But, in a one-up on Jane, Valerie decided she’d use Sam’s connection to me to score big before she killed us both.
Because that was the way this misadventure would end, right?
I closed my eyes, so tired the room had begun to spin. Only one thing to do. “Fine. It’s not as if I have a choice anyhow.” Valerie nodded and grinned at Sam. I took a deep breath. I reached into my pocket, where I’d hidden a paring knife. She was only three steps from me, maybe two if I moved fast. Which I did.
I rushed forward, my knife coming up. She turned too late, but Sam saw me coming. He jumped across her and shoved me backward onto the other end of the couch. “Drop it!” he said, right in my face, his hand squeezing the tendons of my wrist. With a cry of pain, I did as he bade, disappointment rushing with blood through my veins.
“Damn you to hell!” I struggled with him, just needing to lash out at anything or anyone.
Click click.
I was now familiar enough with the sound of a gun being cocked that I froze. Valerie loomed up beside the two of us, the gun pressed against the back of Sam’s head. Somehow, that terrified me doubly. The room seemed to go very still.
He smiled at me, small and bitter and chagrined. I held my hands up and said, “Sorry. I’m—okay, you win.”
“I always do.” She lifted the gun, and Sam scrambled off me. When he sank into the couch, he dimpled up at Valerie, but wiped sweaty hands on his jeans. How in cahoots were they? Was he in danger or not? Perhaps I should request an org chart of the criminal network.
Valerie asked, “When do you start filming?”
“Night after tomorrow.”
“Fine. Sam will be in touch.” She shoved the gun into her adorable, cherry-print purse. “I’ll be watching. If you even begin to approach a cop, and I’m including Nicolette Fitzgerald, it’s over.”
My head whipped up. She smirked. I should punch myself—how long had I been followed? This threatening business became her. Some goons just came right out and explicitly told you what harm they intended to do you and your loved ones. Valerie simply smiled with perfectly glossed lips and left your imagination to fill in the horrific blanks.
I nodded, not wanting to talk to this person anymore. I couldn’t even look at Sam. Whatever tender feelings I’d been nursing about him were smashed, obliterated, withered and many other similar verbs.
“Lay off the booze,” Sam advised me, oh so helpfully. I flipped him the bird, which amused Valerie terribly, her laughter tinkling like stale piss all the way out and down the hall.
I leapt up and slammed the door behind them. I locked it, but why, right? Locks were toys to them, a cute distraction on the way to ruining someone’s day.
I sank down the door to land hard on my butt. A tear slipped onto my cheek. Not only was I heartsick, now I’d been betrayed and threatened with death as well.
Meeting Sam had led me to this charmed existence of professional success, but I seemed to be paying for the honour over and over again in the worst ways. Did Meryl Streep have to deal with this sort of thing? No one had even asked me if I wanted to make a deal with the devil—somehow I’d put my name in his book without realising it. I should have got to dance naked in the woods first, at the least.
Ellen and Nicolette were set to leave for Paris tomorrow, thank goodness. I felt like I couldn’t warn them they were being followed, and no freaking way would I bring them into this morass. Was my phone being monitored? Probably—Sam had done it before. My chest tightened, and I slunk all the way to horizontal to release my fear and anger.
I’d never, ever felt more alone. Hopefully, if I accomplished this ridiculous task, Valerie would only get rid of me.
The bright side was demonstrably dim this time around.
After wallowing for the allotted amount of time, I managed to fire up my laptop—time to learn about the stupid, cursed Mold Cape.
I really have a hate-hate relationship with museums.
Chapter Nine
The Beatings Will Continue Until Morale Improves
Int: A Dark Basement Torture Cell
Angle On:
Samantha Lytton
, bound hand and foot to a wooden chair. The dank room reveals no clues as to who her captor is, but it reveals a lot about his/her personality. As in—they watch too many TV crime procedurals. There’s a wall covered with her headshots and red string, an unrolled leather pouch filled with knives and other such scary pointy objects and a stair machine.
Angle On: Samantha rearing back in horror, especially at the exercise equipment.
Samantha Lytton: What sort of monster could conceive of such intricate tortures? Help! Someone, please help me! What is this place? I don’t remember auditioning for
Law & Order: SVU
… Hey, maybe I’ll get to meet Ice-T…
A faint, musical giggling sounds through the metal door of the basement. Samantha sucks in a breath as she suddenly realizes who has imprisoned her.
Valerie the Evil Ex
saunters into the room on her evil ex long legs. She appears fresh as the springtime, while Samantha sniffs and notices that she herself smells like a cow.
Valerie the Evil Ex: Hi! I’m totally going to hurt you for banging Sam. And also for fun because I’m an evil ex. It’s in the book.
Valerie whips out a book—
Being a Bitter, Vicious Ex for Dummie
s. Samantha pulls against her bindings, but they hold fast, unlike her nerves.